Text 898, 163 rader
Skriven 2004-11-29 06:19:00 av John Edser (1:278/230)
Ärende: The Misuse Of Hamilton's
================================



William Morse <wdmorse@twcny.rr.com> wrote in message:
 
> That doesn't mean that Jim and John are wrong - that is 
> for the reader to decide - but it does mean that they have had 
> plenty of 
> opportunity for making their views known.  So blaming the continued 
> acceptance of Hamilton's rule on some fault in the peer-review 
> process is 
> clearly a red herring. Hamilton's rule is accepted because the majority 
> of scientists who have taken a hard look at it think it has some 
> validity.

JE:-
Firstly, Jim and myself have _entirely_ 
different critiques of Hamilton's Rule.
Jim's argument (as I understand it) is
based on just his belief that evolution 
occurs in nature using an infinite number 
of levels of selection which by some sort
of magic can all act simultaneously. This
view remains incomprehensible and thus, 
entirely non testable. Jim has never
provided just  model sketch of how such
a system could possibly work.

OTOH my view is based on a just
single level of selection that I argue
constitutes Darwin's original argument.
It is fully refutable meeting a minimal
Popperian requirement for the sciences.
__________________________________________
I argue that the total number of fertile
forms reproduced into one population 
constitutes a Darwinian _maximand_ fitness.
___________________________________________

At the gene level this maximand represents 
one epistatic fitness. This maximand cannot 
be selected to be reduced, NO EXCEPTIONS
providing a point of refutation for this
conjecture.

Hamilton's argument remains based on just
a heuristic concept of selfish geneism that 
does allow the Darwinian maximand fitness
total be selected to be reduced. This means
either Darwin or Hamilton are correct; they
both cannot be! I have proven that Hamilton's
rule, as it stands with the total fitness of
the actor deleted, cannot measure any difference
between organism fitness altruism and organism
fitness mutualism. This has resulted in fitness
mutualism being incorrectly paraded as fitness 
altruism. In this rule, which remains
just 100% relative, the sign of c has no other
choice but to remain entirely  arbitrary. However, 
only the sign of c can be employed to measure any 
difference between altruism and non altruism using
Hamilton's Rule.

The argument I present remains basic. Without 
at least one constant term included within the rule 
it remains logically IMPOSSIBLE for the rule to be able
to distinguish between fitness altruism and non altruism
as a stand alone accounting device.
I have shown that Hamilton et al remain in error by the 
amount m which represents the so called base level fitness 
that has been deleted from the rule. Only ONE case of
altruism can be proven using the rule where this
one case has been deleted from the rule:

		rb-c > m


Hamilton's Rule, which has been used as a stand 
alone fitness accounting device for over 50 years
to determine when organism fitness altruism can
evolve in nature was at its very inception, and remains 
today, utterly misused. A massive but false fitness 
altruism industry has come into being during the 50 years
or so that the rule has been misused to support organism
fitness altruism after group selection failed to
support it. The irony remains that Hamilton's rule 
is also group selective because rb can and mostly
does, constitute more than one fertile organism.
Please note that the failure of Enron corp. was 
based on corrupt accounting rules that, like Hamilton's
rule,  remained 100% relative so that debits could
become credits via accounting magic.

Hamilton's rule is exactly what I would expect
if mathematicians decided to try to take over the
science of biology. Mathematics is _not_ a science.
Is anybody here prepared to argue that it is?
Science has to be based on refutable conjecture but
mathematics can validly be based on just irrefutable 
axioms simply because mathematics does not need 
to represent anything within nature whereas the 
sciences are _required_ to do so.

The professionals that post here (and Jim McGinn)
have proven themselves to be recalcitrant to my
basic but fully refutable argument. The
gene centric Neo Darwinists cannot even provide
a single documented observation within nature 
of a genomic gene being independently selected. 
When pressed all they can come up with are meiotic 
drive genes. They don't seem to realise that these 
genes are heading for extinction _because_ they have 
reduced the total fitness of the actor they reside 
within. Because they just exist does not prove they 
were selected _for_.  

The fact that:

	(a) Hamilton's basic error of deleting the total 
	fitness of the actor could permeate the
	evolutionary theory sciences for over 50 years

	(b) be evaded on a continuous basis within
	sbe discussion between myself and the professional
	Neo Darwinists that post here for over 4 years

proves to me that the current peer review system to be either
corrupt, incompetent or both.


I HAVE:-

1) Provided a logically self consistent 
argument that can easily be understood
based on a proposed, single Darwinian 
maximand fitness.

2) Described an experiment (not just a
model!) that can refute the fitness maximand
I have provided.

In short, unlike most professional evolutionary
theorists that post here (and Jim McGinn) I have 
provided what science requires me to provide.

My regards to all,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser@tpg.com.au
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